The USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service has released FoodKeeper, an app for helping consumers maintain food safety & avoid food waste at home.
Tag: USDA
Time to Get the Fall Vegetable Garden Started!
Disappointed with some of the results of your Summer planting? Well, it’s do-over time: get started on your Fall vegetable garden!
US – India: Dealing With Monsoon Failure
By Lester R. Brown The scene plays out in India. At a reception, I met the head of Indian operations for Esso (now ExxonMobil). When I asked him how business [ … ]
Peak Meat: U.S. Meat Consumption Falling
Americans are eating less beef, pork, and poultry, and that decline in meat consumption is good news for our health and the environment. Janet Larsen from the Earth Policy Institute lays out the details.
Bumper 2011 Grain Harvest Fails to Rebuild Global Stocks
2011’s grain harvest was massive: the largest ever. Given the number of lean years prior to it, though, the grain produced will not replenish global stocks… and, thus, stabilize food prices.
Who Owns America's Farmland?
Nationwide, farmers only own 60% of the land they farm. In many of the most productive row cropping areas of the Midwest, the percent of farmer-owned land is significantly lower (see Map above from the USDA, 2007 Census of Agriculture). Much of our farmland resource is owned by non-farmers and rented to those who actually […]
Apple Crop for 2009: Safest On Record
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) just published a new version of their criminally misleading, “Dirty Dozen list” based on data from the 2009 crop that the USDA released this spring. [ … ]
A Rational Analysis of the USDA Pesticide Residue Data
When the Environmental Working Group (EWG) makes its annual “Dirty Dozen List” of fruits and vegetables with pesticide residues, it does so without paying any attention to which [ … ]
The USDA BioPreferred Program: Consumer Empowerment… or Confusion?
Got a particular label you look for when buying certain kinds of products? FSC for wood and paper products? Green Seal for other household products? USDA Organic for food? A [ … ]
US Organic Farming: Digging into the Numbers
In 2008, the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the USDA (USDA-NASS) conducted a first-time, in-depth survey of the US organic farming sector. A summary was published in 2010 from which [ … ]
The Nature of “Natural”
[social_buttons] If you go to the Organic Consumers Association website you will see that they are upset about the way that stores like Whole Foods market products as “natural.” They believe [ … ]
An “Inconvenient Truth” about Composting
Composting is a really green thing to do, right? I’ve always thought so since my Grandfather taught me to do it in the early sixties. Large-scale composting is getting to [ … ]
An End to Local Meat Sources?
I am obsessed with farms and farmers markets. People that read my work probably know that by now. Did I mention that I sometimes go to three different farmers markets [ … ]